Boy climbing a wall - West Village

Boy climbing a wall - West Village

Boy climbing a wall - West Village

The boy was climbing the wall but was feeling guilty in a certain manner, and he was glancing at his mother who had passed on the right just to make sure everything was alright. Who knows, she might have not seen what the boy was doing. I applied a B&W filter, which renders well on this picture on my opinion, and provides something out of time. Would this picture been shot 50 years ago, it would not make a big difference. It is like an intemporal scene which could have happened at any epoch. We might call this picture the intemporal innocence.

This photograph is a typical example of a street scene occurring in front of you and for which you are not prepared at all. The boy was running very fast, and suddenly grabbed the bars of this window. The cap was still on my lens, and I had no time to check the parameters or exposure. I just shot. Fortunately I was on a semi automatic program, but anyway, looking at the exif, the shutter speed was 1/15s ! I dare to say I was lucky on this one, it could have been worse, but eventually the picture was OK, and I would have felt very bad to miss it. Since then, when wandering in the street, I try to get ready for any situation. The compromise I found is to push the ISO to 400 and switch to a semi automated program when hanging around. The camera will do the rest. Or you can switch to a fully automated program as well. On this picture typically I would have totally missed the shot if I had been on manual mode and parameters out of whack for instance. The scene lasted may be 2 seconds…not much time to choose the correct exposure!

Also the morality is : Whatever your equipment is, whatever is the unsuspected scene happening in front of your eyes and for which you are not prepared, Press the Shutter! A photo, even so-so is better than NO photo!

More Black and White pictures here : Black and White Photo Gallery